The Quiet Fixer of La Mesa: How Pool Pro Ron Deloux Turned Wrenches into Second Chances
On most mornings in La Mesa, California, the air is marine-cool and clean enough to make you believe in fresh starts. That’s where you’ll find Ron Deloux, cap pulled low, fingers already tracing the familiar ridges of a pump lid O-ring. He’s the kind of pool professional who can recognize a backyard by the sound of its equipment—“I could hear from the driveway when a commercial filter needed a backwash,” he says with a shrug—yet it’s the people around those pools who hold his attention most.
Deloux’s story is pure Southern California grit: born in the state, a stint in the Navy, years out in the blistering desert of El Centro, and then, in 1979, a return to San Diego that stuck. He hiked the local “hills” that feel like mountains, cycled 60-mile routes for fun, and built a reputation for being the calm in any backyard storm. When the pandemic scrambled a booming industry, he didn’t flinch. When technology leapt from millivolt heaters to automation and robotics, he learned it. And when life threw a health scare—“a three-way bypass,” he says plainly—he reinvented himself.
“If I could go back to 1972, I’d tell myself: skip the weeklys, do repairs. It’s a good income, and it keeps your mind working.”
That pivot—from weekly service to repairs—became the making of him. While others raced house to house, Deloux leaned into the puzzles: ghostly heater faults, pumps whispering problems, automation panels blinking in a language only patience can decode. He went to classes, learned the electronics, and kept going until the unknowns became a familiar sort of friend.
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The Mentor He Didn’t Know He Was
Deloux insists he never set out to be a mentor. It just happened—at a parts counter, on FaceTime, over a troubleshooting call when a young tech was staring down live power and bad nerves. “Hands on,” he says. “I’ll do the first one with you. Maybe the second. The third time, your hands are on the tools. That’s how it sticks.”
One day, a newcomer from out of state confided he was afraid to enter the business because of racism. Deloux and his nephew told him the truth about San Diego: the work speaks first. The man took the leap. Four years later he had 80 accounts and the kind of good problem that makes your phone ring nonstop. Deloux beams when he tells it. Another mentee had just left prison. Ron met him for bike rides, answered a parole officer’s check-ins, and asked one life-changing question over dinner: Why not pool service? Today, that man is off parole, “doing great, making good money.”
“This is one of the few trades where competitors actually help you,” Ron says. “I felt that when I started. I try to be that for someone else.”
When the Mountains Burned
San Diego is paradise until the wind turns. Deloux still remembers the Cedar Creek Fire—thousands of acres scorched, the Crest community nearly gone, soot falling like midnight. Every pool in San Diego, he says, went black. “It was start the engine, keep going all day,” he recalls. They cleaned, vacuumed, broke down filters, then did it again when the Santa Anas returned. The city rebuilt; so did the backyards.
It’s a reminder that for all the jokes about skimmer baskets and stubborn unions, pool work is community work. The backyard is a family’s summer, a senior’s therapy laps, a neighborhood’s July. And when disaster comes, it’s the Ron Delouxs who show up with carts and cartridges and calm.
The Craftsman’s Code
Ask Deloux what newcomers underestimate and he answers without hesitation: their customers. He tells a story about a client panicked over DE in the pool—likely a broken manifold. He explained the plan, the fix, the why. She calmed down. A colleague wanted to drop the account anyway. “Why?” he asked. “She’s happy. We’ll solve it.”
That—paired with an almost meditative attention to detail—is his north star. He can still visualize the pressure gauge on every filter he’s tended. He still laughs about the day a German shepherd “ate the Beware of Dog sign off the fence” while he retreated to the truck. And he still believes in the basics for rookies: a truck that runs, the right gear, wholesale accounts, and the discipline to map every stop before the first week’s rain tests your patience.
“The tools are for you to work with. If you’re fighting the tool, you’re working for it—not the project. Relax.”
Chemistry, Robots & What’s Next
Deloux has lived enough cycles to know that “the new thing” usually becomes “the useful thing.” When automatic cleaners hit, pros swore they’d lose business. He installed them—at cost, even—because they cut service time in half. Today he sees the same arc with automation and robotics. Will a robot ever walk into a yard and fix a heater? “Not soon,” he says. But remote diagnostics, guided repairs, and smarter test gear? Already here.
He’s bullish on one skill above all: pool chemistry. Not app-deep. Real understanding. He’s watched younger pros win clients by pairing modern photometers with old-school know-how. “The machine is value added,” he says. “You still need the brain to double-check it.”
The Heartbeat of a Trade
There’s a monkish quiet to Deloux’s brand of excellence. Weekly service can feel like solitary confinement; repairs require conversation—with homeowners and with the equipment itself. He chooses both. He’s the guy who will FaceTime you through a wiring tangle, then remind you to laugh at the end of a long day. He is also, crucially, the person who tells a struggling tech to keep going… or who knows when to stop pushing, like the kind but clear talk he gave a mentee suddenly set on opening a restaurant. “Some minds are set,” he says gently. “You learn when not to wrestle them.”
When Rudy Stankowitz introduced him on the Talking Pools podcast—“one of our top 10 Mentor of the Year nominees”—Deloux waved it off with a smile. He doesn’t measure his career in trophies. He counts it in phone calls returned, filters resealed, livelihoods steadied, and the young pros who work with confidence because he picked up when they needed him.
“Enjoy what you do,” Ron says. “Have a laugh. Some days are overwhelming—take them one at a time. They’re not allowed to eat you if you don’t fix it right away.”
On a perfect La Mesa morning, the light is soft and the work is waiting. The sound of a healthy pump thrums like a heartbeat. Ron Deloux listens, nods, and tightens one more union with hands that have built a life out of clear water and second chances.
